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AI-Generated Portrait Sells For Nearly Half a Million In Auction (bloomberg.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the someone-got-ripped-off dept.

A portrait created by artificial intelligence fetched $432,500 at Christie's in New York on Thursday, the first time a computer-generated artwork was offered by a major auction house. Bloomberg reports: The print on canvas, titled "Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy," depicts a blurry and unfinished image of a man. Displayed in a gilded wooden frame, it was estimated to fetch $7,000 to $10,000 and offered as the final lot at Christie's auction of prints and multiples. The work was the brainchild of Obvious Art, a Paris-based collective, with help from an algorithm known as GAN (Generative Adversarial Network).

"We fed the system with a data set of 15,000 portraits painted between the 14th century to the 20th," collective member Hugo Caselles-Dupre told Christie's. The piece sparked a bidding war among five parties that lasted about seven minutes, with an anonymous phone buyer prevailing, said Christie's spokeswoman Jennifer Cuminale.

6 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. As an Artist... by painandgreed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I hate to say it, but I suspect this just shows that the most important part of being an artist is marketing. I doubt their AI is really all that great and probably more complex attempts at similar things have been tried. Especially considering it is coming from an art collective rather than a coding collective. Look at Banksy. Nothing really that Blek leRat or others haven't already done, but they have a nice collection of people helping them to promote and make the news. Oh well, they hit the jackpot. I hope their cool people deserving of it.

    1. Re:As an Artist... by Locke2005 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It might not have been painted by a computer at all... this might just be a cheap trick to make money by selling something painted by a bad art student.

      --
      I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    2. Re:As an Artist... by ChromeAeonuim · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think that's a pretty open secret. Go on to DeviantArt or one of those sites sometime, and you'll see tons of skilled, tallented people with great art portfolios. But they're not marketing themselves at some ritzy gallery. Seems like none of these fancy art buyers have ever found talent at some random out of the way location, like rural Iowa or something. Nope, it all seems to come from those with the means and connections to present themselves to the millionaire crowd with some pretentious made up story about the emotions behind the piece. That is clearly 100% marketing.

  2. Re:Crazy rich people doing what they do best by ChromeAeonuim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    At least this looks like something. I can't wait for the day when some pretentious, fart sniffing, trust fund baby blows $400k one of those modern art masterpieces that looks like a parrot crashed into a window, while going on about all the symbolism and emotion the brilliant artist put into some blurry smear of paint and how the peasant class just isn't sophisticated enough to get it, only to find out some soulless AI made it.

    I'm sure they'll still find some way to justify it in a manner that eventually swings back around to 'poor people are stupid and uncultured' and the other privileged morons will eat it up, but still, I'll be laughing.

  3. Thank you internet! by TomR+teh+Pirate · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Thanks for the free art. I heard some guy paid $500k for something I just downloaded...

  4. Re:Crazy rich people doing what they do best by reboot246 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You know the old saying, "a fool and his money are soon parted"? It's still true.
    I've seen better refrigerator art done with crayons by toddlers. But, people are people and there will always be a few stupid ones in the bunch.